The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed Israel’s representatives the world over that there were never any humanitarian supplies or equipment aboard the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli commandos were ambushed by armed mercenaries posing as peace activists. The commandos opened fire and killed nine of the attackers after three soldiers had been brutalized and temporarily captured.

Of the seven flotilla ships that were intercepted by Israel on May 31 and afterward, only four were freight ships, the MFA reported to its embassies and consulates: The Challenger 1 (a small yacht), the Sfendonh (a small passenger boat) and the Mavi Marmara (a passenger ship) did not carry any humanitarian aid, and had only the passengers’ personal belongings.

The four freight ships are the Gaza, the Sofia, the Defeny and the Rachel Corrie. As of June 7, Israel had only offloaded equipment from the Defeny. The equipment offloaded was loaded onto 26 trucks, and an additional eight trucks are waiting at the Kerem Shalom crossing to enter Gaza.

Turkish hackers have targeted Israeli sites over the past several days and succeeded in defacing a number of sites on Thursday, including the official website of the Tel Aviv municipality. The online attacks were launched in revenge for a clash between IDF soldiers and passengers on a Gaza-bound ship that left several Turkish citizens dead.

While no official data exists, reports indicate that hundreds of Israeli sites have been affected by the hackers’ attacks. Most of the sites damaged by hackers were relatively small. The hackers’ attempts to deface larger sites, including government web pages and media outlets, were not successful.

Part 2 of a Two-Part Series. The first part of this series, a detailed account and list of aid Israel provides Gaza, can be seen here. Israel’s Foreign Ministry (MFA) has prepared a three-pronged “counter-attack” to the flotilla of anti-Israel “humanitarian” ships scheduled to arrive in Gaza later this week. Among the elements of the Israeli response is a detailed explanation of the blockade Israel has imposed on Hamas, as outlined below.

Sarah Weiss Maudi, the Foreign Ministry’s expert on maritime and humanitarian law, was interviewed by the FMA website about the justification for the blockade on Gaza. She explained that the reason why ships are not allowed into Gaza is Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on the coast of Gaza. Israel did this, Maudi said, “because Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime that controls Gaza.”

Hamas has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel proper, she said, “with weapons that have been smuggled into Gaza by various routes, including the sea… Maritime blockades are a legitimate and recognized measure under international law, and may be implemented as part of an armed conflict at sea.”

She further said that “under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no vessels can enter the blockaded area. That includes both civilian vessels and enemy vessels. Any vessel that violates or attempts to violate the maritime blockade may be captured or even attacked.”

“Various naval manuals, including the naval manuals of the US and UK, recognize the maritime blockade as an effective naval measure that can be implemented in times of armed conflict,” Maudi continued. “And those manuals give various criteria for making a blockade valid, including the requirement to give due notice of the blockade. Israel, in accordance with the requirements of international law, has publicized the existence of the blockade currently in effect, and has published the exact coordinates of the blockade via the accepted international professional maritime channels.”

The interviewer then said, “Let’s talk about the transfer of supplies over land. Why can Israel decide what goes in and what can’t?”

Ms. Weiss Maudi responded, “In order to answer that question, we need to think about the events of the past few years. In 2005, Israel completed its disengagement plan and completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip, so that no Israeli military or civilian presence remained in the Gaza Strip. The disengagement plan ended Israel’s effective control of the Gaza Strip after almost 40 years of effective control… What currently exists is a state of armed conflict.”

She added that though Israel had hoped “that the disengagement would be used as a springboard for more positive relations with our neighbors in Gaza, in actuality, the opposite occurred. Instead of positive relations happening, the terrorist organization of Hamas seized power in Gaza and stepped up the rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli communities and towns in Israel proper adjacent to the Gaza Strip.”

It seems as while Osama Bin Laden is calling to end the gaza blockade, their leaders are creating a virtual blockade themselves. I have been getting a couple of hits a day from Gaza. I wonder if this is one of the site that is going to be blocked.

Islam’s inability to deal with critiques reflects their own insecurities. It seems like they know there jihadi philosophy is built on lies so they try to avoid people from waking up.

(IsraelNN.com) Hamas leaders in Gaza have announced plans to block “licentious” websites from Gaza computers. A telecommunications official said Sunday that at least 5,000 sites had been blocked so far. However, he said, many sites deemed inappropriate would remain available due to a lack of proper equipment to block all of the sites on Hamas’s blacklist.

Gaza has seen a crackdown on people and institutions seen as “un-Islamic” over the past several months, including bombings of cafes, hairdressers, and pharmacies and attacks on the area’s small Christian community. A Christian school was bombed on Friday. A Gaza City cafe was bombed on Sunday morning, leading the owner to complain that his establishment “has become Sderot.”

Hamas seizes half the fuel Israel sends to the Gaza Strip and uses it in part for its military wing’s vehicles, Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials said Thursday.

Israel cut off the only source of fuel for Gaza’s 1.4 million people Thursday after Wednesday’s deadly attack on the only fuel transfer point into the territory.

But Israeli defense officials indicated that the cutoff would not last past the weekend.

Nir Press, commander of the military liaison unit for Gaza, said Hamas takes about half the fuel transferred to the Gaza Strip.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a PA official, told Haaretz that Hamas seizes some 400,000 of the 800,000 liters of diesel transferred to Gaza weekly and intended for uses such as generators, hospitals, water pumps and sewage pumps.

Israeli sources said Hamas was preventing the pumping of all the fuel from the Nahal Oz depot’s reserves and funneling it to the Strip’s gas stations. In the past week, only a small amount of fuel and diesel was pumped from the depot, leaving some 820,000 liters of diesel and 200,000 of gas in the depots, they said.

‘Hamas is trying to create a false fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip,’ a senior government source said. ‘The simulated strike by Gaza’s gas-station owners is also organized by Hamas. They want to create long lines for gas and a feeling that Israel is tightening the siege on Gaza, although this is not the case,’ he said.

It looks like Hamas was trying to create more media manipulation and deist. The thing about terrorist is they lie about everything. It is just pathetic the media buys into their lies. Israel destroying Hamas is long over due.

Hamas’ fake martyr operation: “Palestine Press Agency reports that one of the ‘martyrs’ that Hamas claimed to have been killed during Wednesday morning’s murder of an IDF soldier was in fact killed in internal Fatah/Hamas clashes, and Hamas brought his body to the area to claim that Israel killed him: (autotranslated):

[Hamas’] Qassam Brigades announced in a press conference Wednesday in Khan Yunis in the martyrdom of Mohamed Fayed Chamie said that one of its leaders were killed during clashes with Israeli special forces and enable the sniper and killed an Israeli soldier east of Khan Younis…

Local sources in the Gaza Strip said that Mohamed Fayed Chamie not in the place in which it was killed, pointing out that while his body was transported to the hospital and his funeral emerged as a refreshing! There is a new death, which implies that he was killed in the internal events of the Gaza Strip and his body was thrown in the Israeli operation to his funeral and announcing that he martyrs killed during clashes with the occupation.

Chamie a resident of neighborhood Khan Younis many accuse him of being behind the murder and assault on Fatah and the security services and is one of the hired killers in the ranks of Hamas and the militias participated in the bloody coup in the Gaza Strip ‘, according to the sources said.

Citizens in the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses told Palestine Press News ‘that Hamas has always followed this method during the events preceding or following an internal liquidation operations in the ranks of the militia hide them and no disturbances in the ranks of its members and the number of dead in concealing internal bloody events.’

This is not the first time that Hamas has been accused of faking martyrs, either.

Since PalPress gives details on the person’s name and circumstances, I am counting this as a 2008 self-death, putting the number at 57. And if this practice is as prevalent as it sounds, I am sorely undercounting – and the counts by various agencies of Palestinian Arab deaths from Israeli fire have been inflated as well.